Taekwondo Federation To Give Grassroots Talents Identification Priority,Ashiru

 

 

 

To consolidate the progress made at global level, President, Nigeria Taekwondo Federation (NTF), George Ashiru has said that discovering new talents at grassroots remains the priority of the federation.

 

  The newly-elected Vice President, Commonwealth Taekwondo Union (CTU) assured that the federation intends to unveil its programme tagged Strategic Initiative for Taekwondo (SIFT), which he says would help to develop combined grassroots talent identification system.

 

  “In the next few weeks, we will be unveiling the "Strategic Initiative for Taekwondo" (SIFT). The idea is to develop a combined grassroots talent identification system and funnel these into an Elite Athlete performance training process, which will if properly funded should both raise the technical standard of training and coaching in Nigeria as well as save Nigeria huge funds on international training programmes. 

 

It is only this sort of programmes that can help Nigerian sports, not the staccato processes we have been used to. We are rounding up our internal administrative system prior to the introduction of SIFT,” he said.

 

On Team Nigeria performance at the just World Championship in Mexico, he said: “We went with a relatively small team of players that had continued exposure to international tournaments this year. Our goal was to most importantly keep ratings of our players within the top 35 in their weight categories, as this will impact selections towards the next Olympic qualifying process.

 

To this effect the boys performed well. We didn’t have the long-term professional process of preparation, which is typical for a World Championship, which had over 140 nations, represented.

 

He added: “If we had a four to six months continued formal preparation, that team would have been top eight at the event. You need to be ranked top six to qualify by right for the next Olympics, and two of our athletes were already in the top 10 prior to the event. So, my sights are on the next events, where a good strategy and proper funding will ensure a more robust outing and more outstanding result.”

 

On his election into the board of CTU, he explained, “The CTU consists of 74 member national federations of member countries of the Commonwealth Games Federation. The CTU will become the main technical organ organising Taekwondo at the Commonwealth Games each time a host city features Taekwondo. That is a huge opportunity to be an insider in the decision making and policy setting process. This can impact our strategic preparations and participations at these Games.

   

Continued he said: Apart from these, the opportunity to foster bilateral relations between our member nations is useful. We can have joint training programmes between nations and provide technical support to each other and enhance relations between member nations. 

 

For example, my emergence as the first African Vice President is directly attributable to previous continued personal relationship with many of the nations involved in the CTU, and this provides a formal platform to continue what we were doing in personal terms.”